I got this question: Q. I was wondering how you introduce classroom objects. I was thinking about doing something with a bag full of objects and have student pull them out one at a time and circling each object after it was revealed. Do you have any suggestions? I would really appreciate it! Thank you! […]
This is a repost. It is a way to fill two weeks of classes with CI. Chill uses it and speaks highly of it. That right there is enough for me to repost it and give some ideas to newer teachers who may not have seen it and who are looking for ways to get
There has been a recent thread on whether PQA or stories are easier to do, or bring the best gains. My thought is that it depends on the teacher. I personally have gone back and forth on this, as I am sure many of us have. One year I might prefer PQA to stories and
Also here is a “funny-if-it-weren’t-so-true” report from John: Hi Ben, I recently had the privilege of hanging out with Diane Grieman at a gathering of local CI teachers, and she had an interesting story about textbooks. She spoke of a colleague who, when asked how she managed to teach from mostly TPRS based materials, in
This from John: Ben, We create stories together as a class and everything goes great; everyone does their jobs and I’ve got pictures to work with and a rough, written version of the story by my story writer. I take that rough written version and polish it up for our Step 3 Reading, right? I
A friend told me about his recent bike tour in the south of France. Here is what he said: “We just rolled along the countryside and caught the sights and sounds along the way with a lot of good food, wine and so on. Hanging out over there seems to have a lot more dimensions
Carly Pike has a question that I don’t believe has been addressed here before: Dear Ben, I am a brand new teacher, attempting to survive my first year. Things are going as well as any first year could expect to go, however I’ve hit a roadblock. I have just started to teach a combined French
In yesterday’s loss to Seattle, Denver, and all the other teams in the National Football League, and a whole lot of other Americans who work with groups of people, actually won. Why? Because we saw modeled, by the Seattle team, interactions between the team and especially it’s coach Pete Carroll that describe a new model,
There is a thread on Movie Talk over on the forum some of which I moved over here. There are some very valuable MT links in this discussion: Chris S. – Yesterday basically on a whim I movietalked this: youtube.com/watch?v=nfYPktsd9bs It’s 3:23 long, it’s called “Chicken or the Egg,” has sound and music (but no
Personalization is a two way street. The kids must sense in the PQA that we really care, as a person, about them, in the midst of all of the questionning. Susan Gross has pointed this out to us so many times. However, it is sometimes very hard for us to genuinely approach our kids with open heart
How many people are still enforcing jGR/ICSR now at the end of January? Just curious. I am thinking less people than in the fall. Why? Perhaps for two reasons: 1. Everything is working. The Classroom Rules poster and the jGR chart require only limited use during class to straighten out wayward youths. The classroom discipline
Just to summarize a thread that pops up here every once in a while, we have been working on coming up with ideas for upper level classes. We have two that are being tested by various group members in their third and fourth year (true CI kids since level 1) classes. The first idea is
